


Call Off Your Ghost

by isyotm



Series: Tourette's AU [4]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M, Horizon (Mass Effect), Tourette's Syndrome
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-03
Updated: 2015-07-03
Packaged: 2018-04-07 09:46:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4258707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isyotm/pseuds/isyotm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kaidan and Shepard meet again at Horizon. Stress and post-battle adrenaline make everything harder than it has to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Call Off Your Ghost

**Author's Note:**

> Titles from "Call Off Your Ghost" by Dessa. Fans of _Welcome to Night Vale_ may find it familiar.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first time he looked out into the vastness of space, something in his mind, some primal instinct he had and has no name for, balked. _This isn’t possible,_ it screamed.
> 
> He feels that way now, looking at her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uh so this chapter probably isn't really that canon compliant. I'm sorry. You've been warned.

When he closes his eyes, he can see the shining silver towers of Vancouver, the way they change color with the sun rise. Sometimes at night he dreams that he can feel the breeze off the ocean ruffling his hair, that he can smell the salt and hear the horns of the cruise and cargo ships coming into port. One of his earliest memories is sitting on his father’s shoulders and shouting that he could see Vancouver Island across the strait and his mother’s soft laughter as she indulged him, saying, “Of course you can, sweetheart.”

Horizon is nothing like Vancouver.

There’s no place in a big city that you can look at the world and see nothing but miles of land in every direction. Even on the waterfront, there are the ships and the restaurants and _people_.

There are people here too, but it seems like there are never enough of them for all the _space_.

He’s been on spacewalks before but this is different. Here, on a planet, he _expects_ to see people. It’s like looking at a painting composed of only negative space. Horizon feels more like it’s defined more by what’s missing than what’s there.

It makes him feel jumpy and anxious, exposed. He’s like a duck in a cartoon, floating on a peaceful pond while nearby in the bushes the hunter is taking aim.

Lillith tells him that’s just the city slicker in him talking.

He laughs uneasily and doesn’t tell her that soldiers who mix up their gut feelings with other instincts don’t get the chance to become officers. He’s not bragging. It’s just the reality of the Systems Alliance.

* * *

 

The weather is always mild here.

In that respect, at least, it’s a lot like Vancouver, except that the air smells of dirt and growing things rather than salt and gas and fish.

He has that itching feeling between his shoulder blades again as he walks with Lillith towards the GARDIAN laser turrets. The order to send everyone to the bunkers is on the tip of his tongue, but these people aren’t soldiers. He’s already a stranger here and sharing his paranoia won’t win him any favors.

He’s here to fix the GARDIANs. Once that’s done, these people will be able to protect themselves and they won’t need his “itching feelings.”

Lillith opens her mouth to say something to him, probably a comment on the weather, or maybe to tell him more about the violets she managed to coax into growing here, but she’s interrupted by a low hum that he feels more than hears. It blurs his vision and makes his teeth vibrate in his skull. Nothing like that is ever good news.

Something in his comm fizzles and dies. He taps it and tries to bring up someone, _anyone_ , on it for a solid minute, but no one answers him.

He curses himself. A good soldier trusts his gut. He knows that. Shepard taught him that. She and Ash died to make sure he would never forget it.

 A giant hunk of rock hangs in the sky, blocking out the sun and looming over the fields like an omen of death.

Strange things in the sky are almost never good. This time he doesn’t hesitate to give the order.

The swarm follows moments later.

Kaidan has never liked bees. That he fully blames on being a city slicker. But these things aren’t bees; they’re too big, too angry, and buzzing at him like they can smell his blood and they want it for themselves.

They descend on the colony like locusts and through the thick cloud he can see colonists dropping left and right. Dead? Or just unconscious?

This wouldn’t be happening if he’d just listened to his gut. If he’d just fixed the damn GARDIANs.

Something sharp stings him in the back of the neck and his entire body seizes up, frozen like he’s been encased in ice.

Well, at least that means the others probably aren’t dead.

* * *

 

It’s the same sensation as watching a horror movie, except it’s deadly quiet.

This is a community. This is where people live, where they work, where they play and fall in love and grow old. There should be laughter and talking and if an enemy is here then those _fucking GARDIANS should be firing_.

They can’t even broadcast an SOS because the comms are down.

The buzzing has died away and he can’t tell if it’s better or worse that the swarms are gone because he still can’t move and that means that whatever is happening isn’t over yet.

He hears footsteps but the cadence is wrong, the steps thudding against the ground in an unfamiliar way. The thing, whatever it is, walks by him, but he only catches a glimpse of it in his peripheral. He’s left with an impression of burnt chitin, like the skin of a bug, and eye sockets that glow like headlights.

He was on the frontlines of Commander Shepard’s battle against Saren. He’s seen things no Alliance soldier ever has or ever should.

He’s never seen _anything_ like this.

* * *

 

The quiet is broken (minutes? Hours?) later by gunshots.

A sniper rifle. A heavy pistol. A submachine gun.

Whoever is fighting out there sure is giving these things hell.

He hopes they’re winning. And that they’re favorable to the colonists.

* * *

 

Something hums to life under his feet and he hears the loud twin booms of the GARDIANs firing. Finally. There’s a flash of blinding light and a sound so loud and deep it seems to consume all of the oxygen on the planet. His heart stutters in his chest, trying to find its own rhythm outside the roaring that threatens to shatter the world apart.

The ice holding him in place melts. He looks up to see the tail end of a beam of light disappearing from the sky.

Along with most of the colonists he’d sworn to protect.

* * *

 

He’d look for survivors but there are hardly any. If he thought Horizon was empty before, it’s nothing compared to now. The structures are empty shells. There are still dents in the grass from where people had stood or fallen after being stung by the swarm.

The only thing he can do is follow the sound of voices, a male one angry and looking for someone to blame, a female one defensive and quickly losing patience and a third—

He rounds the corner of another cluster of buildings and finds the owners of the voices.

The first time he looked out into the vastness of space, something in his mind, some primal instinct he had and has no name for, balked. _This isn’t possible_ , it screamed.

He feels that way now, looking at her.

“Commander Shepard,” he says. He wonders if she can hear the reverence in his voice. He hears her make a sound, a clicking noise, in her throat and wonders if it meant to be his name. “Captain of the _Normandy_. The first human Spectre. Savior of the Citadel.” He turns to the unimpressed mechanic—Delan, one of the (many) voices of displeasure. “You’re in the presence of a legend, Delan. And a ghost.”

She’s haunted him every day for the past two years. If it wasn’t for the presence of Delan and the unfamiliar woman in the white catsuit, he’d think she was a figment of his imagination.

Delan says something, but it goes in one ear and out the other. He’s still just looking at her, drinking in the sight of her. He watches as the fingers in her hand jump.

He never realized how much the image of her in his mind had faded; her eyes had lost their color, her gaze had dulled, the way she held herself had softened.

A soldier first, a weapon second. A woman after, if there was time.

“I thought you were dead, Commander. We all did.”

Her body is solid against his as they hug. Not a dream.

“It’s been too long, Kaidan. How have you been?” Her arms squeeze too tight around him for the briefest of moments.

“That’s all you have to say? You show up after two years and just act like nothing’s happened?”

Her shoulder jumps once, twice, three times but she doesn’t say anything, not a tic, not an interruption. He wishes she would.

Restraint first. That was what they had drilled into him at BAaT. But he can feel the anger, the desperation, the hurt and confusion roiling together into a maelstrom of emotion. It’s not a matter of if he’ll say something he’ll regret, but a matter of when.

“I would’ve followed you anywhere, Commander. Thinking you were gone… It was like losing a limb. Why didn’t you try to contact me? Why didn’t you let me know you were alive?”

A muscle in her jaw tightens. He can’t tell if it’s intentional or not. He used to know.

“I saw reports you were working with Cerberus.” He says the name of the organization like it’s a curse.

“Cerberus,” she parrots. “Cerberus, Cerberus, Cerberus.”

The woman in the white catsuit appears to be growing more agitated with each of Shepard’s tics. She doesn’t know. Huh.

“There were rumors that you weren’t dead, that you were working for the enemy.”

“Our colonies are disappearing. The Alliance turned its back on them. Cerberus is the only group willing to do something about it.”

He stares at her. This is a clone. A fake. It has to be. “You can’t really believe that.” After everything they’d seen? Every scientist they’d had to rescue or kill, every lab that had already been decimated by Cerberus experiments gone wrong? He looks at Garrus again, but the turian’s face is hard. He’s not going to help either of them in this conversation, clearly. “We both know what Cerberus is like,” he says, trying to reason with her. “What they’re capable of.”

She has another verbal tic, but it’s too quiet for him to really make out. It sounds a lot like “help.”

 “I wanted to believe the rumors that you were alive—” more than anything else in the world, he doesn’t add— “but I never expected anything like this. You’ve turned your back on everything we’ve stood for!” Everything they built, everything they worked so hard for. He bites he tongue on the shape of Ash’s name. He won’t bring her into this.

“Traitor!” The word bursts out of her like one of the gunshots and it hangs in the air between them long after the echoes of it die out. He doesn’t know who it’s directed at, whether she thinks that of him or she thinks he thinks that of her.

Garrus is looking at him like he doesn’t even recognize him. The woman in the white catsuit looks like she wants to murder someone. Maybe him.

“I want to believe you, Shepard,” he says. More than anything in the world. More than anything in this entire galaxy that she saved. “But I don’t trust Cerberus.”

“Trust.” It’s a question, an accusation, a request.

“I’m an Alliance soldier. Always will be. I’ve got to report back to the Citadel. They can decide if they believe your story or not.”

It’s hard to see under the layers of her suit, but the mesh of her underarmor shifts in the light and he knows it’s her arm twitching. “Leave,” she blurts.

“Goodbye, Shepard. And be careful.”

He feels like he leaves a part of his heart behind with her when he goes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is the first chaptered thing I've posted here. It feels a little more complicated than it needs to be.


End file.
